Learning to Walk in the Dark
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4.2 • 66 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
From the New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark provides a way to find spirituality in those times when we don’t have all the answers.
Taylor has become increasingly uncomfortable with our tendency to associate all that is good with lightness and all that is evil and dangerous with darkness. Doesn’t God work in the nighttime as well? In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most.
With her characteristic charm and literary wisdom, Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find our footing in times of uncertainty and giving us strength and hope to face all of life’s challenging moments.
This is not a book about avoiding the dark, but about finding the treasures hidden within it.
A New Perspective on Darkness: Challenge the tendency to see darkness as only evil and discover the courage, understanding, and divine presence waiting there.Lunar Spirituality: Move beyond a “solar spirituality” of constant certainty and learn to trust the waxing and waning rhythm of faith, much like the phases of the moon.Finding God in the Dark: Through her signature literary wisdom, Taylor reveals that we often experience the most profound spiritual growth when we are in the dark, not in the light.A Guide for Uncertain Times: Find your footing and hope in life’s challenging moments with a renowned spiritual guide who champions the treasures of darkness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the cover of Taylor's well-wrought guidebook, the light of the moon gives trees slim shadows, poppies bleed on the ground, and an owl gazes, as the book's title laces itself among the trees. Taylor (An Altar in the World) observes these moonlit elements well: "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light...," she writes. Ever the teacher (Piedmont College and Columbia Theological Seminary), she passes on her knowledge, whether purposefully studied or accidentally absorbed, of living with loss. Among these lunar lessons are antipathy to "full solar spirituality," that is, seeing God as light alone, leaving dark to the devil; and sympathy toward the ever-changing moon (imagined as a Sabbath bride, she mirrors the soul better than does the steady sun). Taylor considers "endarkenment," light bulbs, blotted stars, and Our Lady of the Underground beneath Chartres Cathedral. Taylor's intimate voice makes good points and asks good questions, especially in the last chapter's dialogue. She writes exemplars of exposition (narration, description, argumentation), and pens poetry in her similes and metaphors.
